Saturday, December 06, 2014

A Problem with the Problem-oriented Gospel

'[S]oteriology will be cautious about ordering its material around some theme (such as 'facing' or 'hospitality'), or as a response to a perceived problem (such as 'violence'). Thematic or problem-oriented presentations are commonly nominalist and moralistic, since their centre of gravity lies not in the irreducible person and work of God but rather in some human experience or action of which all theological talk of salvation is symbolic. Soteriology must fall under the rule which governs all dogmatic work, namely 'the claim of the First Commandment'. To speak of dogmatic soteriology as biblical reasoning is to press home the noetic application of that claim.'